Bullish over its growth, Turkish Airlines recently placed orders for purchase of 117 aircraft with Airbus. This is the biggest deal in the history of Turkish Civil Aviation. The signing ceremony was held in the General Management Building of Turkish Airlines and included the participation of Mehmet Şimşek, Finance Minister of Turkey; Binali Yıldırım, Transport – Maritime Affairs and Communications Minister of Turkey; Hamdi Topçu, Turkish Airlines’ Board Chairman; Temel Kotil, CEO, Turkish Airlines and Fabrice Bregier, CEO of Airbus. According to the deal, 25 A321, 4 A320 NEO, 53 A321 NEO and options for 35 additional A321 NEO are to be delivered by 2015.
The 117 ordered aircrafts have 21,644 seat capacity in total and this number will be redoubled to more than twice when currently existing 37,800 seat capacity included in.
With the deal of these new aircrafts, the fleet number of Turkish Airlines will reach to 375 in total, including cargo airplanes. And the average fleet age will decrease to 5 from it’s current figure 6.6, by the end of 2020.
Turkish Airlines carried 39 million passengers in 2012 and expects the number to reach 46 million by the end of 2013 and 90 million passengers by the end of 2020.
